And that absurd nom de plume! John le Carré, like some addled saint...

May 9, 2013 9:51 PM

At Slate.com, Ted Scheinman has written a nice appreciation of John LeCarré. Confessions of a John le Carré Devotee

"...I could tell there was more than politics, class, and acts of stratospheric treason to be found in these pages. I adored the psychological acuity with which he roamed his characters’ heads..."

posted by Trochanter (18 comments total)

I sat down and read the Karla trilogy last year, after being utterly baffled by the Tinker Tailor remake. It actually made me a little nostalgic for the Cold War. Though I was annoyed by Smiley moping around about his wife instead of doing something about it.
posted by orrnyereg at 10:07 PM on May 9, 2013 [3 favorites]

The Interpreter was amazing. And you'd never think it was by the same guy as Tinker Tailor.
posted by miyabo at 10:09 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

I love pretty much all his books, though I think The Constant Gardener is a bit on the nose. I just love luxuriating in that atmosphere of moral nihilism and corruption.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 10:41 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

The Interpreter was amazing. And you'd never think it was by the same guy as Tinker Tailor.

Ummmm, it wasn't, was it? The film was neither directed by the same director, nor written by the same people, nor based on a book by le carre?
posted by smoke at 10:56 PM on May 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Having now read the piece, I agree with many of his insights, but found the framing and hyperbole too twee; I thought it was over-written - something you could never accuse Le Carre of, imho.

I do always find it funny, how so many critics allude to his pre-end-of-the-cold-war mastery. I have found that - like lots of writers with hefty oeuvres - he is in many ways writing different versions of the same book, over and over again. Some of these versions are more compelling than others, to be sure, but I've never felt the end of the cold war marked some kind of drop off - indeed I think some of his best books came after that, and also that some of the beloved Smiley canon are not so strong as people think.
posted by smoke at 11:10 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yes, the idea that he wrote his best work about and during the Cold War is a fairly tiresome critical cliche in the making. Or at least I certainly think Our Game will ultimately be remembered as one of his best. Some of the others have come close to greatness, with all kinds of novelistic fireworks and psychological depth, but then succumbed a bit to the temptation to polemicize — I'm thinking of the way all the initial complexity of Absolute Friends, for instance, was undercut by its angry ending — but le Carré is certainly already secure in that cherished secret canon that I think of as "Might Seem Like Genre, But Actually Just Good Novels."
posted by RogerB at 11:21 PM on May 9, 2013 [4 favorites]

I had read a couple of the Smiley books before seeing the movie. As soon as I saw Alec Guinness as George Smiley I realized it was perfect casting.
posted by Cranberry at 12:09 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Based on no research at all, I consider The Little Drummer Girl a near-perfect summation of the gnarly insolubility of Israel/Palestine.
posted by Sebmojo at 1:01 AM on May 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

I don't think it's early enough to write the book on le Carré,, or at least the most interesting bits. I haven't read many of his later works, but what struck me most forcibly about the Karla trilogy was the interrogations, those rare moments when the two ostensibly opposing forces touch most intimately (and which he did so well, enough to make it impossible to put aside the suspicion that he had, indeed, done them so well).

It turns out that in the mirror hall of superpower espionage, it was that intimate contact, fed by mutual need and constant betrayal (and you wonder why Smiley stuck with his wife, Orrnyereg, but not why she stuck with him?) that prevented the apocalypse. Not necessarily the interrogations, but the exchange of information about each other in the way the security services were designed ostensibly to prevent. It was the public political posturing that was the most dangerous; the spooks were servants of that, but in that fetid mix of perverted idealism and nihilism they turned it on its head.

(When that doesn't work, you really do end up in the shit. Saddam Hussein really couldn't believe that the West didn't know his WMD bluster was all lies, aimed at cowering his neighbours - he assumed that they knew otherwise - and he had no channels into the reality of the Washington halls of power. But the Soviets knew just about everything from the smell of the heads on the Sixth Fleet upwards, while we knew who hadn't polished their cap badges in Omsk.)
posted by Devonian at 2:29 AM on May 10, 2013 [3 favorites]

The Interpreter was amazing. And you'd never think it was by the same guy as Tinker Tailor.

Ummmm, it wasn't, was it? The film was neither directed by the same director, nor written by the same people, nor based on a book by le carre?

Maybe miyabo is thinking of The Mission Song, which is a John Le Carré book about an interpreter?

Also, John Le Carré is one of our greatest living authors. He nails the sweet spot between genre fiction and "serious" fiction. I'm an especially big fan of The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People, The Little Drummer Girl, The Looking Glass War, A Perfect Spy, and Absolute Friends.

I was actually a bit underwhelmed by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, at least in relation to other Le Carré books and its relative stature among them. It's still very good, though.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:20 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Timing! I just finished The Looking Glass War last night and really enjoyed it. The only other Le Carré book I'd read was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and this was a nice change of pace.
posted by gaspode at 6:39 AM on May 10, 2013

This reviewer is apparently not that impressed by A Delicate Truth.
posted by ChuckRamone at 6:40 AM on May 10, 2013

"Tinker, Tailor" is one of the the best spy novels ever. Even the Guiness mini-series was brilliant, one of the best, if not the best. I like the new Smiley, Oldman is a genius and I think only he could play george. I just wonder if the "The Honourable Schoolboy" will be made...but they cut Sam and turned into a conglomertaion of jerry and sam and jerry is key.

Tinker is not supposed to be glamourious it is boring and at times tedious as the craft itself, it the the game underneth.

Moscow rules ole vladimir.
posted by clavdivs at 8:12 AM on May 10, 2013

I have found that - like lots of writers with hefty oeuvres - he is in many ways writing different versions of the same book, over and over again.

oh dear god yes. The Night Manager was basically The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Single & Single was Little Drummer Girl was another one with a forgettable title.

Sometimes they're quite good, mind you, and the differences between the two interpretations can be really interesting. (The Night Manager and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold make a particularly good comparison IMO.) But yes, he's reworking the same ideas A LOT.

(I've been a big fan over the years and I think it's very fair to compare him with Grahame Greene, but we should admit this one.)
posted by lodurr at 10:52 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't know that le Carre changed the game single-handedly -- there's a tradition of novels with a similar feel and premise going back at least to Greene's The Confidential Agent and peaking before le Carre with Deighton -- but this branch of spy fiction certainl bears his imprint in a big way, such that when Greene published the very very Grahame-Greeney The Human Factor in the '70s, it was compared to le Carre. (I'd like to think Greene was above being bothered by that kind of thing; after all what it really shows is how much le Carre owes to Greene, which is something I don't think le Carre's ever denied.)
posted by lodurr at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2013

but found the framing and hyperbole too twee

I half agree, but it seemed like he would overshoot, then hit a nice one, overshoot, hit a nice one.

Also agree with those who say le Carré rises above his oeuvre. He's one of those writers who will lead a young reader into the higher places of literature, because he makes it hard to go back to run of the mill genre work.

And, I agree as well with people who say he let his anger at the way the world is going get in the way of his art a little in his later stuff, but for myself, just the reportage in, say Constant Gardener was really valuable.

Plus, look at this excerpt from an interview he gave to Democracy now some time ago:

"So, ask me what corporate power means to me, it means the ability of
the individual to sacrifice his own instincts, his own decent
instincts, in the name of the corporation, that people will do things
to—on behalf of the corporation, to a group of people, which they
would never do to their next-door neighbor, so that all the decent
humanity seems to be set aside the moment they walk through the
corporate doors."

To me, framing it that way -- in terms of plain old decency -- was sharp and refreshing. An illustration of his gifts as a thinker and a wordsmith.

He's one of my heroes.
posted by Trochanter at 11:02 AM on May 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

He's also amazing reading his books on audio.
posted by rustcellar at 12:57 PM on May 10, 2013

The Interpreter was amazing. And you'd never think it was by the same guy as Tinker Tailor.

Ummmm, it wasn't, was it? The film was neither directed by the same director, nor written by the same people, nor based on a book by le carre?

Both films were produced by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, among others.

The previous work of Tomas Alfredson, aside from Let the Right One In, is primarily Swedish TV.
posted by dhartung at 4:52 PM on May 10, 2013